![Peter Paul Rubens - The Holy Family with Saints Francis and Anne and the Infant Saint John the Baptist [early or mid-1630s]](http://c4.staticflickr.com/8/7729/17441455260_c8c7b2924c_o.jpg)
An ecstatic Saint Francis adores the infant Christ, who appears in this warm-hearted vision with the Virgin Mary, her mother Saint Anne, a subdued Saint Joseph, and a playful young Saint John the Baptist. Rubens made a number of modifications in the course of work, intensifying the friar’s impetuous movement and revising the Virgin’s pose from a formal profile to a casual expansiveness. Two other versions are in the Royal Collection and the San Diego Museum of Art. American taste was slow to embrace the exuberant emotionalism of Rubens; this is the first of his works to enter an American public collection.
[Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York - Oil on canvas, 176.5 x 209.6 cm]